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Scottish History - Hollywood And Braveheart

by
Craig Cockburn
Citing an Article in The Independent of October 20, 1997

Hollywood stirs a revolution in the history department!

Scottish history is booming in Scottish universities in the wake of the film Braveheart, which showed the country's medieval struggles against the English. Judith Judd, Education Editor, looks at the reasons for the revival.

William Wallace and Robert Bruce are now attracting more students than the French Revolution. At Stirling, the history department is putting on two instead of one first-year courses in Scottish history.

Numbers on a first-year Scottish history course offered at Aberdeen university are up this year from 70 to 120. Glasgow's growing numbers, almost double since the beginning of the decade, include large numbers of mature students. Stirling has recently added two Scottish history specialists to cope with the demand.

The revival is not confined to history. Scottish literature departments are also pulling in more students than ever before. At Edinburgh university, first and second-year courses, which would have attracted only 40 or so students 10 years ago, are this year catering for 200. There is also a new Scottish literature component which forms part of the honours degree programme.

At Strathclyde, there are 80 in the first-year Scottish literature course compared with 44 last year. There is also a new part-time postgraduate diploma for teachers. Students at both universities study the whole range of Scottish literature, from Dunbar and Henryson to modern writers such as Ian Crichton-Smith, William McIlvanney and Alison Kennedy.

The enthusiasm for Scottish history and literature is not confined to Scots. At Edinburgh, where the Celtic department is one of the fastest-growing in the university, English, French, Germans, Eastern Europeans and Americans are all keen to join in.

Academics give several reasons for the revival. Dr Ken Simpson, director of the centre for Scottish Cultural Studies at Strathclyde, said: "Braveheart may well have given a focus to some people with vague nationalist sentiments. Here was a very lively portrayal of a traditional Scottish hero." But he and others agree that the roots of the change lie much deeper. Dr Cairns Craig, a senior lecturer in the English literature department at Edinburgh, believes they can be traced back to the defeat for devolution in 1979. It inspired a number of Scottish academics to devise ways of encouraging Scottish culture in universities. "A key date was the 1987 election which showed that Scotland and England were on politically divergent paths. There was a feeling that you couldn't do much politically but you could do something culturally."

Dr Simpson also sees the role of the Thatcher government in alienating Scots as one key to the cultural revival which has marched hand in hand with nationalism. Several academics believe that the recent vote in favour of devolution and the latest developments in universities are a sign that the Scots have come of age. Dr Fiona Watson, a lecturer in history at Stirling, said: "Instead of just going on about the Braveheart myth people want to find out what it was really like. It is a sign of a mature society." Dr Simpson said that there was new sense of internationalism, that Scotland was a small nation within Europe. "Scots are beginning to discover links between Scotland and Europe which go back to the Middle Ages."

Source:
From: Craig Cockburn
Newsgroups: soc.culture.scottish
Subject: Scottish History
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 1997
Organization: Mo dhachaidh

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